I got a bottle of Ardbeg the other day. The label says things like "immense smokiness", "sea spray", and "tarry rope", and that's pretty accurate. It's damn good stuff, but you do have to like hugely smoky Scotch. Their own notes on the aroma are pretty funny, actually:

On the other end of the price spectrum, we've been so happy with Old Crow bourbon that I started to wonder if there was anything comparable price/quality-wise in the gin world, so I did a little research. (I recommend Paste Magazine's "10 of the Best Bottom Shelf, Cheap Gins, Blind-Tasted and Ranked") I ended up buying a bottle of Gordon's, and you know what? It's not bad. For the price, it's remarkably good. Now, it is very much a traditional London Dry gin, so you have to like that style, but for a $17 plastic bottle of gin, it's way better than you might expect. I still prefer New Western gin, but I'm happy having some Gordon's G&Ts.

Oh, and I've been making jalapeño margaritas too. Honestly, margaritas are so damn simple to make I have no idea why anyone would ever buy a mix, or why commercial ones tend to be sugary crap, except that I guess it's even cheaper and faster, and Americans tend to like sugary crap.

I sort of feel like a sucker about aspiring to be intellectually rigorous when I could just go on twitter and say capitalism causes space herpes and no one will challenge me on it. - Hugh Akston